This invention relates to a structure of dehydrated instant-cooking foodstuff self-contained in cooking containers and designed for long period of storage and easy handling by hands.
In the prior art, a big disadvantage in cooking soup of various kinds, including clear soup and pottage, zo-sui (a porridge of rice, vegetables and other ingredients), chazuke (rice and tea mixed) and noodles, has been that cooking and serving utensils such as pans, pots, saucers and bowls have been required.
To overcome this disadvantage, in treating instant-cooking noodles, the noodles have been placed into a foamed-polystyrene container shaped similar to a serving bowl, which is subsequently covered at the top thereof with an easy perforatable film. A heat-contractible film is thereafter applied to the container's upper periphery to yield the final containerized structure.
In order to house ordinary instant-cooking noodles on the market (around 3 centimeters thick and around 11 centimeters in diameter), however, the container has taken the shape of a large serving bowl with a wide upper opening. When handled and served for eating, the container necessarily is apt to be disfigured and invites spillage of the hot contents. Thus, handling of the bowl-like container is not only difficult thereby adding up to the difficulties of holding the bowl by hands but dangerous.
Further, the covering of the container with a film only about its upper periphery permits the instant-cooking noodles to take in moisture and the oil in the food to be oxidized due to the ventilating properties of foamed polystyrene. It is therefore apparent that such containers have reduced storability.
Moreover, the foamed-polystyrene containers get dirty easily from atmospheric dust attracted by static electricity. The drop in the container's sanitary and market value is clear.
Other disadvantages also result when boiling water is poured into the container torn partly at its top opening. The attendant drop in the best-coefficient accompanied by contamination with dust and other alien particles in the atmosphere are unsanitary and most undesirable.
Finally, thin films of plastic material which have been employed in the past to provide airtight closure of containers have the disadvantage of being fragile and easily punctured and do not permit the application of writing, such as instructions or identification thereon.